Libertarians, Trump and the Alt-Right.

[Admiral Yi]

No we didn't.

[DGuller]

Yi, when you make a point, just make a fucking point, don't start an endless stream of one-sentence posts with no one knowing where you're going.  If you were a cat, you'd take a week to finish off the mouse you caught.

[Grey Fox]

So, who's arguing that the alt-right & libertarians are not the same kind of assholes?

[grumbler]

So, who's arguing that the alt-right & libertarians are not the same kind of assholes?

Adam Smith, John Locke, and Jeremy Bentham.

[Grey Fox]

No, that's not it.

[DGuller]

What these people have in common is that they are on right wing, have issues with the GOP mainstream, and in some form or another are not quite right in the head.  "Libertarianism" is a convenient label that connotes "right" in contemporary discourse but not conventional GOP.  (I don't think that was true in the 80s btw when the Libertarian party had a stronger civil liberties slant).  Even the guys that march with swastiaks aren't quick to call themselves Nazis or Fascists.

The problem with people calling themselves libertarians is that they can be largely classified into two kinds of crazy:  the fascists that call themselves libertarians because no one likes to think of themselves as a fascist, and the true believer Libertarians that think that the communist approach to perfectly rational ideology was correct, except that they got every single detail exactly backwards.  Either approach leads to extreme idiocy.

Most people hold some libertarian beliefs, but that doesn't make you a libertarian.  That may make you a pragmatist, who realizes that there is no perfect ideology yet that address all the social problems, and the best results are achieved with a mix of ideologies chosen judgmentally.

[grumbler]

No, that's not it.

Sorry.  I thought you were honestly asking a question, but I see from this response that you are just trolling.

So, to counter-troll, I will respond to "So, who's arguing that the alt-right & libertarians are not the same kind of assholes?" with "everyone but morons." Because, after all, calling everyone you disagree with "assholes" and "morons" is the key to a lively and informative  intellectual debate, right?

[grumbler]

The problem with people calling themselves libertarians is that they can be largely classified into two kinds of crazy:  the fascists that call themselves libertarians because no one likes to think of themselves as a fascist, and the true believer Libertarians that think that the communist approach to perfectly rational ideology was correct, except that they got every single detail exactly backwards.  Either approach leads to extreme idiocy.

Most people hold some libertarian beliefs, but that doesn't make you a libertarian.  That may make you a pragmatist, who realizes that there is no perfect ideology yet that address all the social problems, and the best results are achieved with a mix of ideologies chosen judgmentally.

The problem with this kind of simplistic name-calling and pigeon-holing is that it is intellectually bankrupt.  The exact same argument can be made, with only the most modest changes, to say the same thing about, oh, say, Democrats:

The problem with people calling themselves libertarians Democrats is that they can be largely classified into two kinds of crazy:  the fascists that call themselves libertarians Democrats because no one likes to think of themselves as a fascist, and the true believer libertarians Democrats that think that the communist approach to perfectly rational ideology was correct, except that they got every single detail exactly backwards.  Either approach leads to extreme idiocy.

Most people hold some libertarian Democratic beliefs, but that doesn't make you a libertarian Democrat.  That may make you a pragmatist, who realizes that there is no perfect ideology yet that address all the social problems, and the best results are achieved with a mix of ideologies chosen judgmentally.

This is mere argument by name-calling assertion; it only serves the purpose of virtue-signalling to one's own tribe by indicating the contempt the writer has for any opposing ideas.

[The Brain]

No true libertarian is an alt-right nutjob.

[Razgovory]

No we didn't.

I took the sleepy face to indicate you were not in agreement.

[DGuller]

The problem with people calling themselves libertarians is that they can be largely classified into two kinds of crazy:  the fascists that call themselves libertarians because no one likes to think of themselves as a fascist, and the true believer Libertarians that think that the communist approach to perfectly rational ideology was correct, except that they got every single detail exactly backwards.  Either approach leads to extreme idiocy.

Most people hold some libertarian beliefs, but that doesn't make you a libertarian.  That may make you a pragmatist, who realizes that there is no perfect ideology yet that address all the social problems, and the best results are achieved with a mix of ideologies chosen judgmentally.

The problem with this kind of simplistic name-calling and pigeon-holing is that it is intellectually bankrupt.  The exact same argument can be made, with only the most modest changes, to say the same thing about, oh, say, Democrats:

The problem with people calling themselves libertarians Democrats is that they can be largely classified into two kinds of crazy:  the fascists that call themselves libertarians Democrats because no one likes to think of themselves as a fascist, and the true believer libertarians Democrats that think that the communist approach to perfectly rational ideology was correct, except that they got every single detail exactly backwards.  Either approach leads to extreme idiocy.

Most people hold some libertarian Democratic beliefs, but that doesn't make you a libertarian Democrat.  That may make you a pragmatist, who realizes that there is no perfect ideology yet that address all the social problems, and the best results are achieved with a mix of ideologies chosen judgmentally.

This is mere argument by name-calling assertion; it only serves the purpose of virtue-signalling to one's own tribe by indicating the contempt the writer has for any opposing ideas.

You can any argument about anything or anyone.  The trick is making an argument that fits, and the fact that people can make the same argument that doesn't fit says nothing about the fitness of your own argument.

[grumbler]

You can any argument about anything or anyone.  The trick is making an argument that fits, and the fact that people can make the same argument that doesn't fit says nothing about the fitness of your own argument.

The trick is making an argument that fits and doesn't just consist of name-calling.  You failed, as I demonstrated with my little thought-experiment.  Merely asserting that libertarians are exclusively either fascists of mirror-image-communists is just meaningless name-calling.  As I pointed out, it might signal your virtue to Raz and Grey Fox, but no one (even them) thinks it is an intellectual argument.

[The Minsky Moment]

So, who's arguing that the alt-right & libertarians are not the same kind of assholes?

Adam Smith, John Locke, and Jeremy Bentham.

That rejoinder would be stronger if it included someone alive in the last 150 years.

Ed Clark would be a decent example, but his fate and the fate of his wing of the Libertarian Party comes closer to making Raz's point.

[grumbler]

Ed Clark would be a decent example, but his fate and the fate of his wing of the Libertarian Party comes closer to making Raz's point. 

True, but his fate and the fate of the Reagan wing of the Democratic Party would support Raz's point if Raz extended it to democrats as well as "libertarians."

[Valmy]

I don't get it. Democrats are a big tent political party who have supported and ridiculous amount of contradictory positions since their founding in 1828. There is no 'Democratic' ideology.

Libertarianism, on the other hand, is an ideology.